


Stargazing

by zenstrike



Series: love is a shadow [2]
Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: F/F, Grief/Mourning, Hallucinations, Mass Effect 2, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychosis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-08
Updated: 2018-09-08
Packaged: 2019-07-08 16:01:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15933776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zenstrike/pseuds/zenstrike
Summary: At first, Ashley flickers in and out of sight. At first, Shepard wants to see her, to study her, to remember her.- - -Shepard is burdened.





	Stargazing

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Mass Effect Creative Circle prompt “stargazing.”
> 
> date a fallen god
> 
> I love to use these as prompts and it really helped me figure out what I wanted from the stargazing prompt, too, so I hope you’ll forgive me.
> 
> A natural continuation to love is a shadow, I think, so I’ve put them into a series.

date a fallen god

date a new human who is confused when tired, who is scared of sleep as they have never had to sleep before. date a being who is frustrated at being powerless when they know damn well why they are.

 

   

She sees stars as she falls apart, as her body fails her and her lungs ache and her eyes bulge and her consciousness shatters and leaves her screaming.

She sees stars as she wakes, her throat raw and something clicking behind her left eye and her legs giving way underneath her. She heaves. White speckles her vision. She feels the floor beneath her and _feels_ the bright lights around her and she thinks that this—this is it. This is hell.

“Focus,” Ash says, her breath ghosting over her ears. “Get up, get out.”

Get up.

Get out.

Shepard rises to her knees. She gulps in recycled air. Ash straightens and folds her arms and she looks down and she is frowning and bright and steady.

“No,” Shepard says. She scrubs a hand over her face and feels the sensitive burn of her skin. “No.”

Ash doesn’t say anything else. She doesn’t leave either.

* * *

 Before.

She follows Shepard. She’s the ache in her bones, in her heart. She’s the eruption of nightmarish fear in the middle of a night cycle. She’s the presence at Shepard’s shoulder, egging her on: _don’t give in, don’t give up_ . She’s the reminder of cost and of fear and she— _she, she, she_ —is the reason that Shepard refuses to give up or give in.

They are both spectres, in their ways.

At first, Ashley flickers in and out of sight. At first, Shepard wants to see her, to study her, to remember her. She’s so certain this is temporary, that eventually her hallucination will vanish in fire and smoke. But Ash remains.

    In the days before her death, Shepard begins to pray.

    “You have no idea what you’re doing,” Ash says, and her laughter tinkles.

    No, no. Shepard has no idea what she’s doing.

    “Go away,” she begs. “Please. Just—go.”

    “I can’t,” Ash tells her.

    “You’re not really you. You’re just—“

    “Yeah,” Ash interrupts and Shepard forces herself to look away.

    “Shepard?” Liara prompts, her fingers dancing around her mouth in concern, in agitation.

    Shepard gulps a breath. She doesn’t know how she got here. She doesn’t know where she is going.

    And days later, she dies.

    The last thing she sees isn’t Joker’s horror or his guilt, but Ash reaching out to her. Shepard lets herself think: _I’m coming_ . There’s a moment as she’s torn away from what remains of the _Normandy_ , from what remains of her life, where Shepard is at peace with that. There’s a little bit of serenity in her pores, in her lungs, in her soul. It feels like the natural conclusion to her life, after Akuze, after Virmire.

    She wants to be a hero. She wants to be brave. She wants to rush headfirst into the darkness and take one last glimpse of the stars that have been calling to her her whole life.

    But she screams. And she burns. And she does not go gently.

 

* * *

 

    The facility is claustrophobic. She still hasn’t shaken the feeling that this is hell. She will never shake the memory of dying.

    Actively burning, suffocating, decaying— _dying_.

    “You have to focus,” Ash tells her, urging her forward and doing more than the disembodied voice around her. Shepard can’t tell what is real and what is evidence of her own disintegrating sanity: Miranda, Ashley, voices and faces and mechs that she beats with her bare hands when she can get close enough.

    “Nice,” Ash comments when Shepard meets Jacob.

    Shepard wants a window. Just a hint: there’s something more than this, more than these walls.

    She gets a glimpse of herself and it hurts that she recognizes her own face, swollen and battered and torn apart as it is. She sees her scars, vibrant and burning, and she remembers the tearing of her skin and the sound of her own shrieking.

    “Shepard!” Ashley yells and Shepard jerks away.

    Her steps are sure.

 

* * *

 

 

    Miranda asks her about Ashley. Shepard thinks: she doesn’t mean it. Not like that, not like this.

    Ash leans back in her seat next to Shepard. She yawns. She runs a hand over her hair.

    “I left a friend to die that day,” Shepard manages. She grinds her teeth.

    Miranda’s eyebrows twitch.

    “I understand,” Jacob says, trying to smooth something invisible and heavy between them.

    He doesn’t.

    He couldn’t.

    She looks out at the stars and tries to soothe her own panic.

    Two years.

    It’s like a blink. It’s like nothing. Ash is still here.

 

* * *

 

    On the other side of death is more violence, more blood on her hands. Maybe she needs that. Maybe she needs to surround herself with decay.

    “Shepard,” Ash warns her when her thoughts start to swarm. That’s what she’s reduced to, these days: _Shepard_ , and _focus_ , and _damn_. Like little snapshots of Shepard’s battered memories of her.

    There are still people in the galaxy who think the universe of her. A scholarship is named after her. Ashley laughs when Shepard thinks of it, when Shepard glares at her own feet instead of meeting Ashley’s eyes.

    Mordin Solus is the first—the very first—to see what is happening.

    “Trauma. Grief.” He paces. Shepard manages not to flee. “Difficult to comprehend. Difficult to treat. But help—“ He breaks off and looks at her. “Help is always available.”

    She wishes she had the class and courtesy to say: “I don’t know what you mean.”

    Ash is a silent shadow in the corner of her eye.

    “I’ll worry about it if we survive,” Shepard decides.

 

* * *

 

    Her scars burn. Maybe her brain is scarred, too. She imagines the vivid red lines arcing across her body, her organs. Maybe she can be a body without organs.

    A body without a soul. A living soul without a body.

    Her thoughts swirl.

    “Shepard,” Ash whispers in the night and her touch is featherlight and Shepard gasps in her panic, reaches for her. “Shepard.”

    “I’ll sleep better when this is over,” Shepard tells her. She holds her head in her hands. She traces the hot lines of her scars. She’s afraid of infection.

    “You mean you’ll sleep better when you’re dead,” Ash corrects, bitter and pissed off and it’s the most she’s said in ages and _god_ but Shepard needs the wash of her voice over her head, over her eyes, over her skin.

    “I am dead,” Shepard insists but she slaps a hand over her heart and feels it beat against her palm. She shakes. Her fish swim lazily about their tank. “I was dead.” She shatters and falls back to the bed. Her clothes and her hair stick to her skin. She can smell her own sweat. Ash leans over her and Shepard sobs. “Why are we here?”

    “I don’t know,” Ash says.

    And when Shepard feels exhaustion finally drag at her consciousness she forgets, just for a moment, that Ash isn’t really Ash and they cling to each other while the stars dance away from them overhead.

* * *

 

    But up and down are all relative and silent.

  

* * *

 

    “They think I’m something I’m not,” Shepard spits into the darkness of her cabin. She forces herself to lie still, her hands on her stomach. She wants to pick at her scars.

    “They think you’re exactly what you are,” Ash says next to her. Shepard turns her head and sees the stars dancing in Ash’s eyes. “An invincible woman.”

    Invincible.

    It seems like a nice way of saying “undead.”

    It seems like a nice way of convincing herself that this, too, she will survive. But why is it always her?

    “You’ll get them through this,” Ash insists. “It’s what you were made for.”

    Her scars and the stars are the only lights. Even the tanks are dimmed.

    “Yeah,” Shepard says and closes her eyes. When she wakes with the Omega 4 Relay looming like a ghost over her, over her ship, over her crew—when she wakes, she’s alone. And she isn’t surprised.

    All things are temporary.

 


End file.
